Mortification is better than regret
You keep trying to tell me
All I hear is that my life has been a waste.
How long do I keep making the jokes?
I furiously nod,
This is not enough, not for you, not for us
This is not enough,
Where is the rock that ties me to life?
My taste has become mediocre and I accept it
With half-opened arms at best
I enjoy a barely clever book
And I hate myself.
Is growing simple that easy?
Now that I am quite simpled out
Where is my untextured joy?
Will you understand if I took a bite out of my brain
Enjoy it like a pudding
Before I go to sleep
Waste away completely
Will you know what it means to be not?
I see so much of myself
In the corners of your breadth.
Knowing who you are,
Your feathers won't curl up
Nor voice die down
I hope
My love will carry you
To streets and alters you deserve to grace
And everywhere else that shines.
I asked AI for a prompt
God forbid a woman has a hobby
A brain drenched in screentime.
You could call it formaldehyde.
ADHD in a form that is popular and not too
Inconvenient.
There is nothing that I am hiding, however.
I shook AI for a prompt:
So desperate to write when I have nothing to say.
Couldn't think of a hook.
Would you still read it?
Before I believed in the blinding of pain
My hours were solid but crumbling, already
And in the weeks of a passive life thereafter
There were nothing but wooden tears falling down my hollow face.
Those days I had a feeling
Once risen like a phoenix I would
Dazzle you all with a talent unmatched
Wring out my misfortune
Into consumable art
Get applauded and loved
Revered for the serious take on it. Life.
The lack of time
The unfair highs and troughs winding on.
After all these days
Pain resurfaces only as dull.
Mere sickness
Lacklustre in character,
No storybuilding.
Nothing that could absolve
Anything that I will ever think or do.
Breathing my voice back
However
In an imminent curfew drill
Marred by a sinking sense of doom
I wonder
What do I make of it?
There is a red door standing
I hear the water rustling inside,
Beyond the door is a home and the women are up
Already
They're getting ready for a cold shower
The sun cracks the sky open
The red door is glowing like fire unkempt.
It always feels like there's no life
Beyond or before.
It only occurred to me
Yesterday
When the cold sun licked my room
Left a warm shade of glow
For long enough
That I felt I can go back anytime.
Anywhere.
My mother, sitting on the bed,
Peeling clothes off little peanuts
Our small old TV playing rabindra sangeet
My eyes shut, faking minutes of more sleep
Hoping
With all my little might
My tuition didi doesn't show up.
In that universe
My grandma is still writing recipes in her notebook
Waiting for our exams to get over
For us to crowd her apartment,
I am not a fallen soldier
And I don't falter in my speech when I ask for something.
Something that always translates to
Do you love me
Do you know I do
Always
Keeping memories heavier than blood can carry
Because there's always a lot of life
Before, and beyond.
After my thoughts escaped the room
Through the windows
I was left with a remembrance of the ache.
A burden that is so familiar it never goes away,
In my dream I worry, will it come back?
My vigorous speaking doesn't help,
I imagine my friends growing into important figures
They become important figures
And my myopic glance is throttled further.
Doesn't growing up guarantee a thing?
The ink is again toned by war
Seismic inches crippling on each side of the border
But that's hardly news anymore
It's what we expect because we know
History, political science, current affairs.
I form an opinion only if there is an interview,
Else I let it fester
While I watch a sitcom in my bed alone.
Sometimes I have three eyes
An extra pair of ears
A skin as thin as rice paper in water.
This is not to say I don't have days where
If you tried you'd scrape half an eyeball
A thick roll of skin
Perhaps a heart shaped wound,
Sealed with scar tissue
A void with no doors.
Today I am marshmallow-burnt
I remember you and I almost forgot
How far you have drifted away.
It's incredible, really,
How the ants pay respect to their dead,
How I wore my shirt inside out that day,
How you appear in my dreams,
Still.
My keyboard is ready but I keep my heart safe
I cannot write to you
My days with you remind me of my childish bubble.
Doesn't it kill?
To remember an old friend when the time has shifted
The clock hands fractured into a future
I couldn't foresee.
In the laughter of my grief, I remember you
Even as I write it,
It's hilarious
Your birthday's next month
And we evaporated you. Returned to the Mother.
I stood there and watched it all,
And I can attest to it
None of it was real.
In the grief of my love, I laugh.
Maybe you come in peace
And leave
My winters are now old and I remember you
Like a baby laughing at her mother.
It's too soon to forget,
Too tender to remember,
How bitter and angry I become very often
Scares me to my core.
Many things will happen
To me
To my friends, family, people I don't know yet
How will I tell you, knowing that you wouldn't listen?
I will tell you
I am telling you
Maybe you go in peace,
Maybe I'll make peace with my staying.
